Downfall
The past month or so I’ve been extremely busy with life away from the Sim Rig. And fitting in any good solid practice has been hard, especially when you throw into the mix 3 different cars. 2 GT3 cars, 1 which is right hand drive front engine, and one which is left hand drive mid engine, followed by a GT4 car. The difference in driving styles and set ups meant each car needed a bit of time for me to adjust to the required style. When combined with 3 separate leagues it became an almost impossible task for myself and it showed in my performances, particularly RD10 & RD11 of the PPR league.
Suzuka
RD10 was fast approaching and a lack of rig time left me with no other choice but to practice an hour before the actual 45 Min practice began. This is all well and good when you already have a pre-tested set up but if your planning on tuning the car from scratch I usually require a lot more time. This showed in the race and the setup I’d gone with left me with an extremely sensitive arse end, On the Bentley that is. The track is a real mixed bag of corners, slow undulating half throttle corners all the way to 130R which is flat out with a slight lift. Where the Bentley suffered was the exit of the slower stuff, due to the rear end lighting up at the slightest bit of throttle. I suffered a couple of crashes which saw me finish in 23rd
Paul Ricard
Now this was a strange race. I managed to do a bit of practice for this one in advance and work on my set up. Paul Ricard is a track I’ve avoided like the plague, I have never liked it and always struggled to give it the time it needed. With no choice but to get some laps in, I quickly learnt it’s a great track to drive and will probably be a great track to race on. Now for anyone that drives the Bentley they will know that the top speed has been affected by a BOP (Balance of performance) which has left it struggling on straight line speed. Now Paul Ricard is quite a fast track but has a handful of techical corners so after loading the Coach Dave set up and doing a few laps it seemed the car wasn’t driving too bad. With a few tweeks to the set up my times came down slowly but no where near enough. It later became apparent that the bit of top end the set up had gained me, had lost me a lot of confidence in the corners and I struggled to keep up the pace in the technical sections. P15 was what I had to settle with at the end of RD11, with Dan Wood hot on my heels in 17th after losing out on 16th with a lap to go
So heading into RD12 which will be held at the infamous Mount Panorama, the overall standing for each category look like this
Average Sim Racer 